The Jury

And the phrase per judicium parium suorum, therefore, implies that the jury are to fix the sentence.

The evidence is therefore conclusive that the phrase per judicium parium suorum means according to the sentence of his peers;

Pecuniary punishments were the most common punishments at that day, and the foregoing provisions of Magna Carta show that the amount of those punishments was to be fixed by the jury.

Extracts and abstracts are protected if in the opinion of the jury they were published bona fide and without malice.

The right is to publish such comment as in the opinion of impartial bystanders, as represented by the jury, may fairly arise out of the matter in hand.

In assessing damages the jury “are entitled to look at the whole conduct of the defendant from the time the libel was published down to the time they gave their verdict.

On the other hand if you yourselves, when actually sitting in judgement, return a wrong verdict, you cannot rid yourselves of the responsibility for the mistake by blaming someone else for that verdict.

Some of you yourselves have in fact repented before now of having sent men to their death;

I know furthermore, gentlemen of the jury, that if the witnesses were testifying against me that my presence on shipboard or at a sacrifice had been the occasion of some unholy manifestation, the prosecution would be treating that fact as supremely significant;

The honorable course for you, men of the jury, is, not to put the laws or your own selves in the power of those who speak, but to keep the speakers in your power, and to make a distinction between those who speak well and lucidly, and those who speak what is just;

Inasmuch as my father, men of the jury, through this man Theocrines was brought to disaster in his relations to the state and condemned to pay a fine of ten talents, and as this fine has been doubled, so that we have not the slightest hope of deliverance, I have thought it my duty to lodge this criminal information with a view to taking vengeance upon the defendant with your aid, without taking in …

and secondly, because I am both young and without experience, so that I must count myself fortunate if, because your goodwill is at hand to help me, I shall be able to show what this fellow has done;

but do you yourselves, who are sitting as judges, not of cyclic choruses, but of the laws and of integrity in public life, do you propose to bestow your rewards, not according to the laws, and not upon the rare and deserving, but upon the successful intriguer?

Is not the suit one in which the penalty is for the jury to determine?

Furthermore, a juror who so acts will go out from the court-room responsible for having made himself weak and the politician strong.

I beg you, fellow citizens, to hear me with willing and friendly mind, remembering how great is my peril, and how many the charges against which I have to defend myself;

But I commend you exceedingly, gentlemen of the jury, that in silence and with fairness you are listening to us.

Now, fellow citizens, as regards the rest of his accusations, if I pass over any point and fail to mention it, I beg of you to question me and let me know what it is that you wish to hear about, and to refrain from forming any judgment in advance, but to listen with impartial goodwill.

So do not deprive yourselves of what you can reasonably expect from me, and do not deprive me of what I can reasonably expect from you.

You must plead with yourselves for my life, and save it.

and it is in order that judgement may come upon wrongdoers for their misdeeds that you are yourselves constituted and called judges.

If I prove that my opponents’ mother murdered our father by malice aforethought, after being caught not merely once, but repeatedly, in the act of seeking his life, then first avenge the outrage against your laws, that heritage from the gods and your forefathers which enables you to sentence the guilty even as they did;

Not only am I still too young to know anything of courts of law, gentlemen;

and I, like my opponents, gentlemen of the jury, seek refuge in your sympathy.

But should matter for dispute occur, it is your task, gentlemen, to give a decision.

You should bear in mind that while we, the interested parties, take a biassed view of the case, each naturally thinking that his own version of it is fair, your duty is to consider the facts conscientiously;

I, men of the jury, have by now been for a long time engaged in foreign trade, and up to a certain time risked the sea in my own person;

The law, men of Athens, ordains that actions for merchants and shipowners shall be before the Thesmothetae if they have been in any way wronged in the market either in connection with a voyage from Athens to any point, or from some other port to Athens;

Do you now give a just decision in accordance with the laws.

I beg you, therefore, men of the jury, I entreat, I implore you, to remember the laws and the oaths which you took as jurors, to render me the aid that is my due, and not to count the pleas of this man of higher worth than mine.

I know well, men of the jury, that it is a hard task to enter into a contest in which all my fortune is at stake with men who are able speakers and clever in preparing their case, while I because of my youth am wholly without experience in affairs.

I beg of you, men of the jury, to give me a favorable hearing, and, if you judge that I have been wronged, to render me the aid which is my due.

Take the depositions and read them all in turn to the jury, that they may bear in mind the testimony that has been brought and the statements that have been made, and so reach a more correct decision.

I have not deserved, men of the jury, to fail of justice at your hands, nor has Aphobus deserved that he should retain all the money that he has wrongfully taken.

For my father, men of the jury, when he saw that he was not to recover from his sickness, called together these three men, and causing his brother Demon to sit with them by his side, placed our persons in their hands, calling us a sacred deposit.

But one request I make of you, men of the jury, and it is a reasonable one—that you will give us both a fair hearing.

The jury, to whom he then appealed, having heard the case, gave the same decision that his own friends and the arbitrator had given, and fixed the damages at ten talents.

As it is, however (be it said with the favor of heaven), if you prove fair and impartial hearers, I have strong hopes that you will become as fully aware of the shamelessness of this man as were the jurors in the former trial.

We rely upon you, men of the jury, and upon your laws, which ordain that all agreements into which a man voluntarily enters with another shall be valid.

Besides this, men of Athens, you must not forget that, while you are today deciding one case alone you are fixing a law for the whole port, and that many of those engaged in overseas trade are standing here and watching you to see how you decide this question.

But if shipowners, after engaging in written contracts to sail to Athens, are to be permitted to put their ships into other ports, giving out that they have been disabled, or advancing other pretexts such as these of which Dionysodorus has availed himself, and to reduce the interest in proportion to the length of the voyage which they say they have made instead of paying it according to the agreem …

As it is, however, because you thought that something of this sort might occur through rivalry and malice and enmity or through some other pretexts, you made your court a place of refuge for those who have been wronged, and through this right action on your part, men of Athens, you have saved all those who have suffered wrong.

Since Eubulides has brought many false charges against me, and has uttered slanders which are neither becoming nor just, I shall try, men of the jury, to prove by a true and fair statement that I am entitled to citizenship, and that I have been unworthily treated by this fellow.

For it is known to all standing round us, as to everyone else, that in this court Leptines is contending with us, but within the conscience of each member of the jury humanity is arrayed against envy, justice against malice, and all that is good against all that is most base.

but hold fast to what you are convinced is just, and bear it in mind until you vote, so that true to your oaths you may cast your votes against the counsels of the wicked.

If you yield to the nobler impulse and cast your votes with us, you will win for yourselves the credit, and for the State the benefit, of a righteous verdict, and if ever occasion arises, you will not lack friends willing to encounter risk in your behalf.

Nor was it only at the trial that he acted thus, but after judgement had been rendered against Aphobus, he got up before the court and begged the jurymen, beseeching and imploring them on behalf of Aphobus with tears in his eyes, to fix the damages at a talent, and offered himself as surety for this amount.

I know well, men of the jury, that I have to contend against arguments craftily prepared, and against witnesses who are going to give false testimony;

I should have been most glad, men of the jury, had the difference which I have had with Aphobus, and also that in which I am now involved with this man Onetor, his brother-in-law, not come about.

For the fellow, men of the jury, when he first determined to lay claim to the property of Aphobus, declared that he had paid as the marriage-portion, not a talent, as he now alleges, but eighty minae;

Again, this language of yours is absurd, as though you, men of the jury, did not know that all those who commit frauds of this sort determine what they are going to say, and that no one ever lost a suit through keeping quiet, or admitting that he was in the wrong;

It is plain, then, that Onetor having put up pillars on the house for two thousand drachmae, and on the land for a talent, intended to push his claim as though he had paid eighty minae. Could you have stronger proof that there is not a word of truth in what he now says, than the fact that his present story is different from the one he told at first about the same matters? To me it seems that no st …

The request that I shall make of you, men of the jury, is a fair one, that you should hear us with goodwill as we speak in our turn, knowing well that we are wholly without experience in the art of speaking;

And I beg you, men of Athens, to consider what is admitted by these men, and what is disputed;

It is your duty to show that you aid the laws in righting abuses, and that you make no concession to wrongdoers, in order that you may derive the greatest possible benefit from your market.

Men of the jury, having entered a plea that the action is not admissible, I wish first to speak concerning the laws in accordance with which the plea was entered.

Then the man, whom no one would have thought audacious enough to come here, after having plotted and wrought such deeds—this man, Athenians, has so surpassed all in shamelessness and audacity, that he has not only come, but has actually laid claim to my grain, and has brought suit against me!

Would it not be a shameful and outrageous thing, if Cephallenians, in order to save property for Athenians, ordered the ship to be brought here, but you, who are Athenians, should order the property of your citizens to be given up to those who wished to throw it into the sea, and should allow this fellow to enter an action for goods which he schemed to prevent from being brought here at all?

I make of you, therefore, men of the jury, a request which seems to me a proper one for a young man and one without experience in speaking—that you will permit me to call Apollodorus as advocate to assist me in this trial.

To the jurors, therefore, who at that time decided the matter I am deeply grateful for this at least, that they did not suffer Apollodorus to be utterly ruined, but fixed the amount of the fine at one talent, so that he was able to discharge the debt, although with difficulty.

However, since he was proved to have committed perjury and to have brought forward a false accusation, and was shown to have been hired by Cephisophon and Apollophanes to procure for pay the banishment or the disfranchisement of Apollodorus, he received but a few votes out of a total of five hundred, and left the court a perjured man and one with the reputation of a scoundrel.

In my opinion the fact that you took the gold is proved to the jury well enough by your being condemned by the council to which you entrusted yourself When Harpalus arrived in Attica, gentlemen of the jury, and the envoys from Philoxenus demanding him were, at the same time, brought into the Assembly, Demosthenes came forward and made a long speech in which he argued that it was not right for Athe …

Is he unaffected by the people’s decrees, which you have sworn to observe in voting, decrees which were proposed, not by any of his enemies, but by Demosthenes himself, and which the people carried on his motion, almost as though he deliberately sought to destroy himself and yet the just verdict, gentlemen of the jury, is, as I see it, simple:

You give full permission, gentlemen of the jury, to the orators and generals to reap substantial rewards.

I have a few more points to make, gentlemen of the jury, and after summing up my argument will leave the platform.

Why should you spare this man, gentlemen?

When about to go to the ballot, gentlemen of the jury, tell the clerk to read you the impeachment, the impeachment law and the oath sworn by jurymen.

Personally, gentlemen of the jury, as I was just saying to those seated beside me, I am surprised that you are not tired by now of this kind of impeachment.

You do not realize, Polyeuctus, it seems to me, you and those who share your views, that there is not in the world a single democracy or monarch or race more magnanimous than the Athenian people, and that it does not forsake those citizens who are maligned by others, whether singly or in numbers, but supports them.